


Blood In, Blood Out

by saintsrow2



Category: Saints Row
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 06:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8738782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsrow2/pseuds/saintsrow2
Summary: You shed blood to join the Saints, and you stay with them until you die. This is the promise that you make when you join the gang.Troy has not followed through with his promises.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at [Saints-Row-2](http://saints-row-2.tumblr.com).

Blood in.

 

He knelt down.

“How’s Johnny’s leg? It still giving him shit?”

“Yeah. Says the rain makes it ache.”

“Asshole always talked first, thought later. You got any cigarettes?”

 

Troy had spilled blood to get in, both his and others. As small as the gang was – and it was tiny, a fragile baby bird amongst raptors – it was selective. Julius wanted the group to be strong from the outset; if you weren’t willing to fight and die for the Saints, you had no place in the Saints. Troy shook Julius’ hand and then moments later, he shed blood for him. Troy met Julius and then told him ‘I will die for you. I will die for what you believe in.’

It was on that promise that Troy founded his career in the Third Street Saints. He was not just any soldier, he was Julius’ right hand, and he got there through hard work and the promise that when it came down to it, he could be relied upon to die for the cause. Plenty of other Saints did die, and they didn’t get to climb the ranks like Troy. He benefitted from a lie, and those who had every intent of following through with their words gained nothing but their honour.

Other people’s honour and loyalty were highly prized. The honour and loyalty of Julius and his lieutenants, as it turned out, was mostly worthless. Lin died for the Saints. Johnny nearly did. Playa nearly did. Dex ran. Julius ran. Troy ran.

When Johnny tried to kill him, Troy couldn’t really be angry. He had made an oath once. He had never had any intention of following through with it, but it didn’t matter. He had said what he’d said, he had told them all he wasn’t going to leave the gang unless it killed him, that he would sooner die than turn his back on them all. It didn’t even matter that the gang had fallen down around him, because people were willing to make him pay for what he’d said and done.

No, he had never held a grudge against Johnny, and he had fought to get Johnny better treatment in jail. He fought for Playa too. Troy knew that Playa would be just as angry as Johnny – the two were thick as thieves and he assumed they felt the same on all things – but he couldn’t bring himself to let his friend die in a hospital bed when he had the power to prevent it. Playa deserved the chance to die for the Saints the way they had promised they would, not be murdered by a man who was too much of a coward to follow his own beliefs.

 

“No.”

“You probably couldn’t light ‘em anyway, could you?”

“I’m getting better at it.”

 

“John Doe has woken up.”

This was the news Troy got early one morning, as the sun was beginning to show through the skyscrapers that jutted out of Saint’s Row like shrapnel embedded in flesh.

“John Doe has escaped Stilwater Penitentiary. Dozens of people are dead.”

‘Dozens of people are dead, and it is your fault,’ is what the officer meant.

They called Playa ‘John Doe’ because no one had been able to put a name to the face. Not even Troy, who had identified the body they pulled from the lake, had been able to tell anyone a name. Looking at the person lying on the hospital bed, it had occurred to him that he had never seen Playa looking so peaceful, and that he knew nothing about them.

“You were undercover for what, years? And you didn’t manage to get the name of one of the most notorious mass-murderers in history?”

“They never talked.”

“I know getting a confession is hard, but not even getting a name? He never told you-”

“No, you’re not getting it. _They_ _never talked_. I didn’t hear them say a goddamn word in three months.”

Not the whole truth. Playa had started to talk, at the end. None of it was anything Troy wanted to share. The cops did not understand him.

Criminal records turned up blank; their fingerprints and mugshot weren’t in the system. No surprise there, they were English, and if they had immigrated legally Troy would eat his fucking hat. The people who did know their name – _person_ who knew their name – never came forward. They had no identifying information in their belongings, but Troy thought that had a lot to do with Johnny Gat having direct access to Playa’s shitty loft and clearing the place out like it was Black Friday. He couldn’t even be upset with Johnny about that. He understood.

 

“This is hell on my fuckin’ knees.”

“Sorry.”

“You’ve never been sorry for anything in your life.”

“That’s not true.”

 

Playa sat in Troy’s office on a blisteringly hot summer night. It had been a couple of weeks since they had woken up, but it was like they’d never been gone at all. Troy imagined that to them, it was like they’d just woken up after a nap and found a thousand strangers in their kingdom. He didn’t know how _anyone_ would be able to catch up so fast with a change like that, five years of their life down the drain and nothing to show for the lost time but burn scars.

Playa had walked into the fucking police station like they owned the place – and of course, as far as they were concerned, they still did. The most wanted criminal in Stilwater, and they waltzed into the office of the Chief of Police and made themselves right at home. They had absolutely no fear. Or at the very least, they did not fear him. He’d thought about it, and he wasn’t scared of them, either. They still looked like his friend.

“You want a cigarette?”

“Yeah.”

They took the cigarette from his hand and let him light it for them. He was close enough to strangle them, he could have dropped his hand a few inches and wrapped his fingers around their neck, pressed his thumbs into the leather of their purple choker and suffocated the life out of them. Fuck, he could have shot them in the head if he’d wanted to, and he’d be praised for it. Troy put the lighter back in his pocket.

“You’re talking now, then.”

“The mute act got old. I got some sense knocked into me.”

They had suffered brain damage. It had impacted their fine motor skills; he saw it in the clumsy way they handled their cigarette, the way their hands shook. He snorted derisively.

“What do you want from me, Playa?”

“The Saints are back.”

“I know.”

“The cops haven’t been doing anything, so I figured that meant one of two things. Either you didn’t know…”

“Or?”

“Or the Saints never left Stilwater.”

Troy was not used to seeing Playa smiling.

 

“Once a Saint, always a Saint.”

He said it, and he saw the look on Playa’s face. This was not an idle remark, this was another promise. He couldn’t keep making promises he didn’t want to follow through.

When he had gone undercover, Troy was erasing his real identity for the sake of another, and when he was done he would leave that fake identity behind like a snake shedding its skin. It had not gone that way. The Saints had stuck to him, gotten under his skin, and marked him forever. It was like getting a tattoo; even the removal would leave a scar.

The Saints called Playa ‘Boss’ now. Troy wouldn’t be able to ever think of them as anything other than Playa. Boss and Playa seemed different, at a glance. Playa had been silent and wide-eyed, not naïve but somehow dissociated from the reality everyone else occupied. For a long time, Troy had thought they were out of their fucking mind. They did things that were suicidal and did them without hesitation or pause for thought. The truth was, Playa was willing to get shit done, and Julius took advantage of that. The kid would have run off the edge of the world if the Saints had asked for it. They would do anything for the Saints.

Boss was strong and resilient as iron, but they burned like a sword just lifted from the forge. Playa hadn’t had that raw anger, Julius had tried to stop the monster he felt he had created and just borne something far worse into the world.

That wasn’t fair. They were his friend. He understood them. Troy had never thought of himself as an empathetic person, but it was empathy that was going to get him fucking killed.

“You made your choice, Troy.”

The ground was rough against his knees, the starchy material of his trousers didn’t protect him from the rock.

“If I hadn’t gone back to the police, it would have been worse. You and Johnny, you’d both be dead.”

“Thank you. Thanks, you fucking traitor.”

Troy looked up. The Church had been a crumbling graffiti-coated wreck when he’d arrived in Stilwater and the ivory monument to Ultor’s ego rubbed him the wrong way. He’d never liked that prick Vogel, and he wasn’t sad that Playa had thrown the smarmy asshole from the top of the Philips Building. One less suit manipulating the people.

“I didn’t think that would work.”

“I know what you did for us. But you made a promise.”

“I made a promise to a man who broke his own rules and that died like a fuckin’ dog. I never swore anything to you.”

“Once a Saint, always a Saint.”

“I’ve never had a gun to my head before.”

“I have. Couple of times.”

“You probably liked it.”

“You know me. Live for the near-death experiences.”

“Guess I’m about to outdo you.”

They both laughed. It wasn’t funny. Troy leant his head back, felt the muzzle of the gun biting into his scalp.

“We were friends, once.”

“You said we weren’t best friends again.”

“I know. I’m a fucking idiot.”

“You never stopped being my friend.”

“I never stopped being a Saint, either.”

“You know why I have to do this, then.”

“I know. I never thought me and Julius had all that much in common, but I guess there’s going to be something.”

“You both saved my life, on that street corner.”

“I saved your life twice, and this is the thanks I get.”

He was laughing. They were both laughing.

“I saved your life. I got you your first piece. I brought you into this gang.”

He couldn’t stop laughing. It was the finest kind of irony. If Julius was Frankenstein, Troy was the blind old man who had been the Creature’s friend. No, that still wasn’t fair. Playa wasn’t a monster. Playa was just a person who did what they had to do. Even with their handgun to his head, he didn’t hate them. He had too much sympathy for people who tried to kill him.

“Do you regret it?”

Regret saving his friend life? Regret seeing his gang taking over the city _twice_ , rising from nothing to become an unstoppable, dominating force capable of destroying anything?

“What do you say we take that piece, and clean up the Row?”

Fuck no he didn’t have regrets.

Troy looked up at the Church, and at the way the sunlight that managed to make its way through the skyscrapers in Saint’s Row reflected off the stained glass. He closed his eyes. In his mind, he could still see the graffiti, the broken windows, the crumbling gravestones. He missed them.

Blood out.


End file.
